Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Its been ages since I wrote my last post. I thought of taking a short break Initially when we planned to move to Brussels for the kids school. But then there was a visit from my In-laws for 2 months, followed by my son's 3rd birthday and then the school. The kid took some time to settle down and demanded more attention from me, and there you go, another reason for me to prolong my hibernation. Summer was hectic as we were travelling a lot, visited Rome and Paris again. I never get bored of Rome, its such a lively place filled with architectural wonders. When everything was in place and I was almost ready to blog, my laptop gave away all of a sudden, and thats it, I thought I will never be able write a post this year. Still it's in the same condition, can browse only for about 30 minutes at a stretch, as it runs with just battery power, awaiting a new one next week though.(hurray!!!). But during the past one month I realised how much work gets done, if you dont sit in front of your computer for hours together. Yeah, I learned something on that front and I promised myself that I will not sit and browse or blog for more than an hour at a stretch. (India calls excluded :) ).

During my break I did lots of cooking, tried new things and the best part is I overcame the fear of Icing.Yes, I baked a Birthday cake for my son's Birthday and a few other ones after that. Though I love to bake and try out different recipes, this is the first time I attempted to do a decorated version with Icing and all.

It was hard to find certain ingredients called for in the recipe, I had go with alternatives.I took a lot of help from Champa of "The Versatile Kitchen' as I desperately needed some advice and tips from a person who is good at this. Her posts on cake decorating basics were very useful and informative.learned a lot of new stuff from there.She was very patient enough to answer all my questions through email. Thanks Champa :)I also took help from another blog , Aqua's "Served with love". She also has some simple tips and techniques in her blog which guides you where to start for starters like me.

Here are some of the pictures of the Cakes.

I made two train cakes for my son, as he is crazy about trains and a big time fan of "Thomas and Friends".I used a train mould to bake the following cake, decorated with Fondant and placed over a half sheet cake covered with Fondant.

The Following cake was cut out from loaf cakes and decorated with buttercream Icing. Though its not perfect I loved this one than the above cake, as this took lot of time for me.

Here's another one I made for a friends daughter.I cut out the butterfly from a 9" round cake with help from Betty Crocker's Kitchen.They have got some great ideas there. If you hit the Google you are sure to land up there :)

Here's another one I made for my Hubby's B'day. Cinnamon Sponge cake with Chocolate butter cream Icing. Cake recipe from Passionate about Baking.

The making of the Train cake and decorating it for the birthday was a huge effort.I had to do two trial versions before the final cake.Would I do it again ? definitely yes , just to see that lovely smile in my kids face :) worth all the effort.

See you again this week with another interesting Bake that I made with a recipe. Have a great Thanksgiving weekend.

SUmi, glad to see u back after a long, seems u enjoyed having loads of fun while u rnt blogging..All ur cakes looks stunning, gorgeous and very creative and unique..I would like to put my hands in decorating, since its a hard task for me yet..Hope to u see u often with ur delicious dishes from now..take care..

Sumi, Thanks for mentioning my blog. I came here since I was getting hits from here. I am sure you are going to enjoy and rock at cake decorating more now that you have experienced the fun. Welcome back.